Every picture in AJP Taylor’s first world war book told a story

One of the pictures used in AJP Taylor’s The First World War: An Illustrated History, showing Gavrilo Princip, right, being captured by police in Sarajevo. Photograph: AP

I’m glad that Jonathan Jones liked AJP Taylor’s The First World War: An Illustrated History (History and all its grisly facts are worth more than the illusion of memory, 1 November). I collected the pictures for that book’s first edition in 1963 and pay tribute to Taylor’s visual perspicacity. When I presented my collection to the board of directors, he was the only person who unerringly pointed out the telling, the powerful, occasionally even wacky picture. All the other top brass went for the cliched or buttoned-up, stodgy portrait. He became my instant hero – until we received his captions, which were dreadfully meretricious, facetious even. (The editor and I had to trick him into toning them down, pleading lack of space etc.)
Catherine Boswell Fried
London